Room Shuffle Steps on Feet

I do indeed recall this event and this time of my life and will tell you that I was a sheeple doing as I was told. The Professor of the class in question had become upset of his being shuffled from room to room and asked the class to address this problem with the powers that were.

No recollection resides in my head as to whether or not this was ever mailed or emailed. I hope I did not so embarrass myself by mailing this rubbish.   Then you could ask why I’m placing it on the internet so you can all laugh at me? Well, remembering what a fool I was helps me to not be so foolish in the future.

The ‘Jury Selections’ refer to an acting event where a scene or monolog is prepared to be critiqued. This is done to give the actor a clear understanding of how they can improve.

9^th December 2005

Dear Bob,

Where I am sure you are aware of the events of this Sixth of December as they pertain to the acting 120 C course. As you know, the class was sent to more than four locations before finding one that was both unoccupied and suitable, in the loosest definition of the word, for our activities. We are your most advanced students and there was no place for us. 

That day we had planned to perform and get feedback on our jury selections for the following Thursday.  The hour we lost was extremely valuable class time. Lousing it meant that many of our selection groups did not have a chance to perform that day and those that did had to get what they could out of an instructor rushing to give all of his students equal attention.

To compound matters many of our 120 C students are involved with the High School Theatre Festival and could have likely used the hour we spent moving from class to class getting ready for the meeting that Friday. My partner for the next assignment could have used that time in getting a copy of our selection for me. I have lost two days of time to work on that selection because of this incident.

It may not be apparent that the acting C class is the most likely body of students to continue on in theatre and represent the college but we are. We look to the department for the values that will see us through life as professionals. So how are we to interpret this oversight? It is not as if it is unique, 120 C as been booted from space to space before, shared spaces with other classes, and even conducted class outdoors.

There must be some reason for this problem but problems are for those how do not wish to solve them. Perhaps fewer classes could be scheduled at the same time. Better communications within the department could yield a procedure for dealing with this occurrence. Yet another possibility would be to assign courses in commonly needed spaces to other rooms and allow them to reserve performance spaces as needed. No matter what the solution I’m very sure that a well educated group of people like your staff should have no difficulty in rectifying this situation.

Always at you service

Richard L. Neal        

I Lie Awake - Charlie Brown

What he Says about Others - Leo Aikman

Double Digit Tons

I recall this incident, and that I was bruised up the next day.

I haven’t any idea why I wrote this other than to keep it in memory. At the time I felt very alone and to be honest I still do, but I was worn to the ground then and looking for a reason to keep on going.

Even now it’s hard to think of one.

25^th August, 2008

Last week I had one of those subtle reminders of why I go to (the state college), pay thousands of dollars, give up most to all of my free time, sleep time, and whatever else. This one took the form of steel and rubber owned by a company that’s official stance is “we kill so many people every year and most by big-rigs, try not to be one of them.” 

         

I was at work and had just cut the front security seal on a set of 28-foot trailers when the set pulled forward striking me on the shoulder and knocking me to the side.

If I had been a few inches to the left I would have been crushed by double digit tons of freight and equipment. If I had lost my footing I would have gained a face full of concrete or gotten caught by the back tires and been crippled or killed. 

         

“Why is this important to me?” is not the question.

His Plan - Carlton Person

How Soon it Will be Too Late - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Units of Prayer - E. M. Bounds

Buy Back His Past - Oscar Wilde

New Thing in this World - Harry Truman

Remember the Good Samaritan - Margaret Thatcher

Ghost in the World

12th November of 2010

 Dear Cassi,

 

I had a conversation this week with an old neighbor of mine who moved out of the neighbor hood then moved back after finding that her new home was too dangerous. She wanted to show me her new home which was almost the same layout as my home. She had the place remodeled more or less with an emphasis on new lighting. I can't say much for it, but she was happy and that was all that mattered.

She put six sunken lights in the living room and I think two or three in the hallway. I can't say that this is a good way to make a light as it keeps the ceiling and walls darker. A dark home may look good in a horror movie, but you got to live in this place. I noted that the body work on the ceiling fans was a dark chocolate with the blades the same color. They were darker then the wood of the floors and furniture. Over the last fifty years woods have changed a lot. I think they were at their darkest in the 80s. This used to have something to do with the availability of wood.

Now days we can get wood in any color and most of it is fake wood. The bedroom fans had been made to look organic like fire hardened roots of tribal spears. Some people say it adds to the spice of life. I think they're just trying too hard.

Well, in the back yard she had six avocado trees. None had fruit and all six had to be cut back hard just to keep them alive. They had grown so large their branches tangled together making them into a big canopy. The trees had been sickly as if they had struggled to live under their own weight. My neighbor told me that she had six fig trees taken out because they had been too sick to give fruit.

You see a lot of that in California and for that matter much of the world. The bad economy has left much of the world withered and sickly. We over grew our means, and when the economy shut down it all fell into disuse. One day the dust will cover us like a gray blanket, and the rain will carry us away leaving the world barren.

After the tour my neighbor spoke to me for more than an hour. She's a grandmother now and a withered old woman with hard vertical lines on her face. On the left side of her mouth a tar stain from smoking stood out as her defining feature. She lived on my street before I was born and so we spent some time talking about my mother who died twenty-one years ago next month. No one on the block knew haw crazy my mother was. She had a hard life and died young with all the people around her taking no notice.

How many of us are ghosts in this world? My mother and I could have stepped off the face of the world and none would have taken notice for weeks. Like extras in a movie we walk along the streets as part of the back drop of the world. We all have a story, we all have an identity, but so many of us hardly exist. You got to wonder what the hell is wrong with people that they have tunnel vision, and they can't see the people around them. It seems like we all just turn away and forget.

In the end, I told my neighbor that she should get to her dinner because it was getting cold and took my leave. It's funny how she spent so much time talking to me, but maybe I'm a good listener. Then we might have had a few of the same problems. I can't imagine how this woman, with her children and grandchildren, would have a shortage of people to talk to. The world works out that way sometimes. I remember being in crowds of people and still always alone. Maybe those people were like faces in a painting: they look human but just aren't real, or they could be like veins of gold waiting to be opened with pick and drill. Either way, it's time for me to get ready for work.

Stay safe,

Richard Leland Neal

Commitment of a Kamikaze - Lou Holtz

Let it be

18^th May 2012

Dear Cassi,

The other day I came across and old black and white photograph of two people and a baby. They were sitting alongside a house in the middle of what looks like a farm. The couple was alien to me on first glance and I do not believe that I have seen this image before but after some thinking I believe the man to be Grandpa Leland and the woman Grandma Ann.

       

This would make the boy Alan the man who donated half my genetic material. I’m told that mother and Leland got on well, but that Leland had some bad times with his wife Ann. My paternal grandparents spent the last decade of Leland’s life having nothing to do with one another.

       

Back then people would shy about divorce. Ann had told me that in her day once you left home you never came back. Further, that her own father had seen the trouble her married life had come to and offered to let her come back home. This was a grand gesture that never came to pass.

       

I have never heard Leland’s side of this as he died when I was rather young. He was given some respect in death, more than Alan showed my mother, in that he was forgotten and rarely spoken of. Ann did speak ill of him but never when into specifics. She said he was a hard man to live with, but what she meant by it escapes me.

       

Still, let’s give credit where credit is due, Ann was a hard person to live with as far as I can tell. She told me that once they made a recording of her screaming at her children and played it back for her benefit. It was a badge of shame she still carries. There was enough love left for that old man for me to bear his name within my own.

When we speak ill of the dead we often speak ill of ourselves. This is not a rule but a bit to ponder over. The living can always try to make amends, but the dead are no so capable. The anger we hold for them is a cancer within yourself.

Leave the dead in the ground, little sister

Richard Leland Neal

Choices - Colin Powell

Computer Reading to Me

24^th of November 2010

Dear Cassi,

Let me get it out of the way that I'm still not sure how I should send the full novel to you more, because I think I need to give it two more edits rather than one than that I'm having mail issues. It feels like I'm never going to be done with this thing. I think this is the tenth full edit, but it all meshes together now. Endless hours of listening to a computer read it to me. I wonder if the two different computer voices alter my ability to hear the right words.

Each of my computers has its own reader voice. The laptop is a girl and the main computer is a boy and the two do sound different. The old laptop has a male voice named Sam but the computer can't handle text documents over so many pages, and it really gets its wires tied over the reader and word processor running at once.

One frustration among many in a life full of frustration. Well, what can we do the hours pass to quickly as the task takes forever, and I feel the work as a heavy load. The days pass on and I still have more work to do. Well then, enough of my lament.

I don't know if I have spoken to you about my friend, Alex, whose kidneys are inflamed. He came in Monday morning looking as if he would not make it through the day. I could hear him groan as is stomach worked at the fluids that his body could not pass. It was a pain to see him like that, and once again he admitted to not taking my advice. Feeling sorry for the man I gave him the sweet potato from my lunch and told him if he had it he would feel better. I had no other advice to give him having said it all already. What do you tell a man that will not listen?

Tuesday morning I saw him once again and he said that the sweet potato had helped him markedly. “It got me through the day.” He told me. You would think that if one right meal would change things he would have at least one right meal a day, but no he just keeps killing himself.

I don't claim to be a health expert, but what I tell him works. You have to wonder about a man that is willing to put himself through that without doing a few simple things.

Then, I asked him where he shopped, and he said that his sister did the shopping for him, and that she wouldn't by him soy milk because she was afraid of getting the wrong one. He had one carton of Costco soy milk and he was good for a week. I just don't get it. This man could be one day away from better health, and he just keeps doing the wrong thing.

I feel for the man because I've been there, and I don't want to be there again. It was agony when my kidneys overloaded. I couldn't exercise, it was hard to work, I just sat in bed for hours in misery. The worst part about it was that my body would never heal because of the nutrition deficiency. It was murderous and frustrating.

In the end I stumbled on the right things to keep my body going. It's helped some but I've still a long way to go. A man like me shouldn't go giving people health advice. I should go look after myself first. Then it’s a hard road with many hills to walk. It's a long and lonely walk. The kind that fills your boots with cold mud. That's my world.

Anyway, best get to it

Richard Leland Neal

Wise and Otherwise - Mark Twain

Not Being Beautiful - Golda Meir

Children as a Battle Ground

23^rd November 2011

Dear Cassi,

   

One of the things I learned a good deal about in both Psychology and Sociology is the aftermath of divorce. I know it has played a large role in my life, and I must imagine it has come about in yours. 

   

Some people stay in bad marriages for the sake of their children, some folks split up because they just can stand one another. Still others come to understand that it truly is the right thing. I have to stress at this point that the experts recommend all couples go to therapy when the relationship is good. Generally, by the time couples come to see a therapist they have built so much resentment that the relationship is doomed.

   

Living in that broken home children will rarely thrive. Even if the couple can hide their fighting normally their children will pick up on the hostility. Petty folks tend to bleed their misery into the world around them even if they refuse to believe that they are miserable.

   

For those couples who do split up, and there are many, their children often become at battle ground. The arguments that once lived in the marriage are played out in the minds of impressionable children. Those children are asked to choose between parents. Then the children loving both father and mother can’t shake the feeling that they have betrayed both.  

I recall telling one of my Psychology classes that the thing to do is be reasonable adults, and your kids should come out fine. The sad truth is that most of the divorcees studied by science simply aren’t reasonable adults. How does that old song go? “Shattered lives broken dreams.”

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal

Intelligence is Quickness - Alfred North Whitehead

A Life Too Full

24^th November 2011

Dear Cassi,

   

One of the many things we have in common is working long hours. As the New Year brings me back into full time employee and full time student this would be a time to say a few words.  

   

What was it that fellow said to you? “Two jobs breaks the soul.” I will never understand the mentality of people who think that because they have a slogan for something it must be true. I like to define truisms as those things that become obvious once pointed out. A slogan is a philosophy that one must take up by their own volition. You should tell this man that his soul must be a fragile thing.

   

I know folks with two jobs and I know folks with three jobs, but none of them need to apologize for living in a world where those things are needed. True, there are those of us that live in a dream world and will never see the world for what it is even when they get slapped in the face with all the pain and suffering.

   

It has always been helpful to me to see those sleep walkers for what they are and press into the nature of my soul the values that will bring me round right. Those of us who decide to live their lives in a dream may never wake, but for the wakeful we must give those dreamers little mind.

   

It’s funny how we were taught for the whole of our lives that it’s good to dream. I will grant you that working toward impossible goals will keep a soul from going stagnant, but living in a world of dreams takes a stagnant soul. For some folks life is easy, for us life is hard, but so long as we have the will to fight there is still hope.

Stay safe, Cassi,

Richard Leland Neal

Shake Hand With a Clenched First - Indira Gandhi

How do I Make an Alien?

This was a post in response to the blogs of the ill fated Leucrota Press and their commentary on the makings of Aliens. I have to figure that it would make good reading for any Sci Fi geek looking to make a new beast. 

15^th January 2011

NASA found a what you say? Last time it was warp bubbles and the time before that life on Mars.

   

Sorry to tell you, but I’ve been following this story and the science was a little fuzzy. First off the Arsenic they fed the bacteria had phosphorus in it so the bacteria could have just eaten that, second the extracted DNA was poorly cleaned so it could have been contaminated. This is a long way from proof of arsenic life.

Proof is a bad word when dealing with one study to begin with. My teachers always told me to say ‘this study suggests’ rather than it proves because proof can be unproven.

Moreover, if you’re coming up with a strange body for your aliens you also need to come up with a reason for the morphology. With my massive Red Stone warriors I came up with a clear evolution that molded them into their present state. Every now and again people keep saying ‘I thought they weren’t humans because they were so tall.’ 

They’re tribe is no different from you or I than a pigmy, but the diversity among the ranks of the human race is lost on many a modern American. There are lots of humanoids running around on earth for us to make into aliens and even more strange things in the sea to give intelligence. Still, let us set that aside for now.

Things evolve out of utility, and if you’re going to make a true alien the first question is “why did it evolve?” It needs hands to hold with and feet to walk with, eyes to see, and a brain to wonder. If something is going to be so different from humanity that it is truly bizarre then why did that life form become dominant?

The final note in this alien song is, “what does it have to do with the story?” Remember that people can’t see what you’re talking about so you need to show them with words. My Red Stone are giants and so I have to keep reminding the reader that they are dealing with a being bigger and stronger than normal humans. If I forgot to do that they would just be people who use different words and their uniqueness would be lost.

Different isn’t always good, so if you’re coming up with something to be different you’re thinking too hard. 

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder - Thomas Haynes Bayly

Who Lies - Bosnian Proverb

 

More than I can Accomplish - Michelangelo

New Life Code

I wrote this more than a year ago and it applies to my life just as well today as it did then. This is a post form my other blog so to some extent I’m robbing Peter to pay Paul but I feel this just makes good reading.

21^st January 2011

This is the Situation, Now Deal with it!

How many times in life have I heard an inspirational line of bull about bad situations? ‘Every development is an opportunity!’ ‘When life hands you a lemon make lemonade.’

If I may test that with a few situations I’ve been in: When I was ten my mother died of cancer. Lemonade any one? Nope, I don’t feel better.

When I was twenty-two I overloaded my kidneys. That looked more like orange soda to me.

When I was twenty-five my father gave the money for my college education to my sister so she could buy a home. I suppose you could look at the bright side but it will never equal the thirty grand my sister got. No, at the end of the day I just need to deal with that and move on.

So that’s my new life motto “This is the situation, now deal with it.”

Okay, the situation is that I just joined the 12.4% of Californians who are unemployed. I have a year of unemployment and some savings. My life has always been a mess; at least from the day my mother died twenty one years ago, so around finishing my degree and finding a new job I can always spend a few hours a day picking up the pieces. 

I’ve always wanted to reboot my life, reread every book I own, watch every movie again, get my health in order and get my head where it should be. That was a fancy, a delusion, and a fool’s errand, but if I find a job on Monday at least I’ll be able to say that I finally got to that pile of laundry. 

Marry Un-birthday

4^th December 2011

Dear Cassi,

So here it is, the anniversary of my birth, and I spend it as I would any other day my washing machine isn’t working. With the down beat of dirty clothes I recall the worst birthday I ever had.

       

I do believe this happened back in two thousand six. It would be the last time I requested a birthday celebration. I had called one of the Yorba Linda crowd and informed them of the occasion. He invited me down for a day of video games, and that is as far as the event went. Truly, half rump is the tone of all their workings in that neck of the woods.

       

I came home from work that day and slept shortly then rose and drove down to an apartment where a Local Area Network had been setup. We played some variant of War Craft where no bass was built. When it was over I went home showered and returned to work. That was all, I later learned that only two, myself included, of the six or seven of us knew the occasion.

       

At work that night the real festivities begun and sleep deprivation set in. I began to hallucinate, seeing movement where there was none, and looking every which way in the grip of some irrational paranoia. I remember that I couldn’t sit down as sitting would bring on sleep so I stood. My feet grew sore and swollen from having spent too long in boots over the passing weeks and the cold cut into me through my work clothes.

       

I had never before or since felt so strongly the elements than on that day, and I have never again made plans for a birthday celebration. They have never turned out well but that one was the worst.

Marry un-birthday to you, Cassi.

Richard Leland Neal

Getting Old - Bob Hope

Return to the Night Shift

1^st December 2011

Dear Cassi,

Returning to the night shift has been easier than I thought. I thought I would have to spend my shift standing up to get through the night. In truth the night shift was like an old friend I was coming back to not at all the wrestling match it had been. 

       

Part of it is the patrols. I think I pull two miles of walking every night and at least eight trips up the stairwells. I’m so out of shape that I can feel it in my heart when I take long walks. The heart has so much to do with the head that getting me up and moving about helps keep me awake.

       

I’ve worked at places where it breaks you down after a few months, but I don’t think there is enough walking on this post to do much to me physically.

       

The energy drinks are a part of my life but only on Mondays for the most part. That’s the one thing I have trouble with, because I can’t get to sleep during the day on the weekends. I’ve no idea why that would be, given that this way I only sleep six times a week. Then if you think about it I’m getting eight hours on the competition.

       

Another thing I do to stay up is chew gum. The action of chewing keeps me up. That doesn’t help a huge amount, just takes the edge off, still taking the edge off is enough.

       

Overall, I’m glad that I’m back on nights, but I’m happier that I’m back working. My unemployment came out to sixty percent of my old pay but is less than forty of my new pay and with the bills finally coming in I need stability.

Bundle up and keep warm,

Richard Leland Neal